I. Field
The present invention generally relates to electronic commerce and, more particularly, to technology platforms and methods for developing websites of vendor affiliates selling online vendor products to general public.
II. Background
Over the past several years, electronic commerce over the Internet experiences rapid growth and online shopping has become a routine method used by consumers for purchasing products, such as goods or services. One method of online shopping uses a “stocking Vendor/non-stocking Affiliate” scheme. This scheme allows to a non-stocking Affiliate of a participating Vendor to establish a “virtual” mail-order shop for selling vendor products over the Internet.
To operate the online mail-order shop, the Affiliate needs to create, maintain, and periodically update an Affiliate Website that contains information pertaining to vendor products and facilitates execution of online sales. One method for developing the Affiliate Website is disclosed in the referred to above U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/867,909.
However, despite the considerable effort in the art devoted to development of methods for online shopping, further improvements in technology platforms and methods of electronic commerce would be desirable.